


In this space, nothing matters

by Metagross (Eros_Scribens)



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: Agender Character, Alien Biology, Biting, Crossover, Crying, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Gethenian AU, Hurt/Comfort, Natural Disasters, Other, Sharing a Room, That "locked in a room/safehouse/cave together" trope, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 05:29:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3884179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eros_Scribens/pseuds/Metagross
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maxie and Archie freed Groudon and Kyogre, each doing so at the bidding of, respectively, Orgoreyn and Karhide, which are each trying to win the fight to be Gethen's voice in the Ekumen.  But the devastation is worse than even what the countries intended, and in the aftermath, Maxie and Archie, now stateless, are in a safehouse together, waiting to be smuggled off-planet.  And time and chance happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In this space, nothing matters

**Author's Note:**

> This is a complete crossover between "Left Hand of Darkness" and Pokemon, and yes, I'm doing this just to fuck with gender. I keep seeing a lot of omegaverse in a lot of fandoms, and while there's nothing actually wrong with that, and it's often done well (not to mention that a game called "Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire" is just begging for it), I keep wondering why there's so much of it when Gethenians exist. Like, an entire planet of agender/genderfluid people, plus the whole heat thing that omegaverse has. So, Gethenian AU, and have fun with gender.

                The worst thing about apocalypses is the waiting.  Specifically, the worst thing about failed apocalypses.  Or apocalypses that weren’t quite meant to be apocalypses in the first place—simply ecological weapons of mass destruction.

                It all came down to Karhide and Orgoreyn, and the two countries’ perpetual territory struggles.  And then, as each kingdom vied to become the planet’s speaker to the Ekumen, the territory struggles turned into an arms race—who could destroy the agriculture and natural resources of the other country first.  Fortunately, everyone had the sense not to use atomics on their own planet, as the people on Terra Solaris had once done.  But the alternative that emerged was, as it turned out, hardly better.

                Icy Gethen had very few indigenous species of pokemon, and most of those were thought to actually be genetically altered transplants from some other planet, brought to Gethen at the same time as the original Gethenians.  But among the few that were indeed truly native, there were two that seemed to be singular occurrences, species of one, that were the heart of the Drumner volcano and the Gobrin glacier.  And these Karhide and Orgoreyn had decided to awaken, to shake the earth and melt the ice, and wreck each other.

                Unfortunately, they’d managed to each awaken their chosen monster at almost the same time.  The monsters had fought each other, instead of the countries they were supposed to devastate, and their combined, angry elemental energies had almost ripped the planet in half.  Both country’s teams of geobiologists had had to work together to subdue the raging pokemon, just in time.

                Karhide was furious that its Team Aqua had worked with the enemy, even to stop the world from blowing apart, and charged them all with treason and exiled them, without even the traditional three days’ start to get out of the country.  Orgoreyn was furious that its Team Magma had worked with the enemy, even to clean up their own mess, and charged them all with treason and put as many of its members as it could find in prison camps.  The entire planet, when it found out why Gethen had shaken and fissured and almost exploded, vowed death on all members of both teams, who had been completely disavowed by their respective countries, and were being made out to be independent ecoterrorist teams—not a hard thing to do, because their existence had been ultra top secret up until now.  And so Archie and Maxie, the leaders of the respective teams, ended up together in a safehouse in Karhide, waiting for passage on an Ekumen ship.

                Three weeks.  That was when the next ship would arrive.  Three weeks, and then a few days on the ship and a few more in quarantine to enter Chiffewar’s biosphere, and then, by the almost-magic that was lightspeed travel, it would be almost twenty years, real time, after all of this, and hopefully everything would be sorted out back on Gethen and everyone would know that the governments of Karhide and Orgoreyn were actually behind the destruction, or that at least there might be some sort of statute of limitations on ecoterrorism, treason, and totally abandoning shifgrethor for the sake of preventing the destruction of the world.  Three weeks of having to be locked in a small building with another person whose defining career achievement (on both their parts) was trying to destroy the other’s entire country—not a small obstacle to friendship.

                It made for a lot of mutual avoidance, as much as could be done in an apartment that had two rooms other than a bathroom.  The days passed in frantic, silent scrambling for shifgrethor and sanity; both of them frayed their nerves down to their synapses, but Maxie seemed to be particularly on edge.  And then one morning, a week before the departure date, while Archie was brushing their teeth in the bathroom, Maxie locked themself into the bedroom, and wouldn’t come out of it.

                “Maxie, I need my socks!” yelled Archie through the closed door.

                “Fuck off,” came the reply—well, it was some sort of expletive in Orgota, anyway; Archie was really only fluent in scientific vocabulary.  The break in Maxie’s voice held more meaning than the actual syllables.

                “Are you _crying_ in there?” asked Archie, a bit surprised.  They didn’t completely understand the screamed reply, but got the sense that they were being told in great detail where to go and how specifically to freeze to death there.  “Dammit, Maxie, my feet are freezing, there’s a draft in here,” they said, shaking the doorknob—which, this being a cheap slum apartment, broke and fell off in Archie’s hand, and the door came open.  Archie strode in, grabbed a pair of thick socks out of their suitcase, and turned to start yelling at Maxie, all thoughts of shifgrethor out the metaphorical window.

                Maxie was curled up on the other bed, and they _were_ crying, and also pretty clearly starting to go into kemmer.  Some Gethenians have very negative reactions to the initial secher phase of kemmer, and apparently Maxie was one of them.  They looked absolutely, utterly miserable.

                “What’s wrong?” asked Archie, kneeling by the bed, socks forgotten.

                “Head hurts.  Everything hurts.” A few sobs.  “And these _fucking stupid emotions._ ”  More sniffles.  “I usually get shots to suppress it, but between the whole ‘world about to explode’ thing and having to hide in a safehouse, I haven’t gotten my shots for three weeks, so….”

                “That bad, huh.”  In Karhide, at least, suppressant shots were a last resort for medically dangerous reactions to kemmer—though mood swings as bad as Maxie was having probably counted.  Archie stroked Maxie’s hair, not sure what else to do, and though they were the better part of a week away from the normal time for their own kemmer, Archie felt Maxie’s pheromones begin to affect them—a sort of pins and needles and tension and touch-hunger all over their body.

                “Not you too,” complained Maxie, noticing the effect on Archie as well, but they rolled over and patted the space beside them on the bed.  “Come here, might as well.  We’re mortal enemies, but I don’t give a shit.”

                Archie climbed into the bed and cuddled close to Maxie; already, the contact soothed both of them.  There was no hurry.  Since they both were just barely going into kemmer, the hormonal predominance would take several hours, before they were ready to do anything more.  They felt Maxie bury their face in their chest, and Archie started rubbing little circles down Maxie’s back.  Maxie had already stopped crying, and now relaxed into Archie’s touch, almost purring as Archie smoothed out the tension in their arms and neck and legs.

                Maxie hadn’t realized they’d fallen asleep until they woke up, feeling Archie shift next to them.  No—they’d actually just sat back down on the bed.

                “Here—I got you some water and some hyperfood cubes; figured you’d be as hungry as I was when you woke up.”  Now that Archie mentioned it, Maxie was, and also the headache was gone.  They ate, quickly, and then Archie pulled Maxie to them again.

                “Sssssh,” said Archie, as Maxie stiffened for a second.  “I think it’s been long enough that we can do this.”  Archie’s fingers moved over Maxie’s chest, and it was sensitive and it almost hurt but it felt good too, and it was at this point that Maxie realized that they’d kemmered female.

                “Don’t you dare get me pregnant,” they warned Archie.  “I don’t need that, especially not now.”

                “Don’t worry.  I found condoms in the first-aid kit.”

                “But no kemmer suppressants.  I checked a week ago.”

                “Well, you didn’t tell the people helping us escape that you were on them.”

                “I had other matters on my mind at the ti—mmph!” they gasped, as Archie nipped the base of their neck.

                “You don’t like that?” asked Archie.

                “No, please, do that again.  Slower though.”

                Archie did—biting and sucking slowly down Maxie’s chest and stomach, leaving a trail of already-blooming marks, and reducing Maxie to incoherent whimpering, as they sat on the edge of the bed and twisted their fingers into the sheets.  When they finally reached the place between Maxie’s legs and licked there, Maxie screamed and grabbed Archie’s hair.

                “Oh, Archie, keep doing that, yes, ohmygod ohmygod…” and then it turned into noises that Archie wasn’t sure if they were Orgota words they didn’t know, or simply nonsense (and they suspected the latter).  In any case, they very much “kept doing that,” licking and sucking and kneading until Maxie came, about four minutes later, with a cry that sounded loud enough to bring down the authorities of both Karhide and Orgoreyn on them.

                “Maxie, that was good, you’re very good,” said Archie, holding Maxie through the aftershocks.

                “I want you.  Inside me.  Do you have that condom on?

                “Yes.  Feel?”

                Maxie reached down and felt, their fingers drawing a groan from Archie.  Satisfied with the precautions, Maxie guided Archie’s kemmer-swollen phallus to their own entrance.

                It took all of Archie’s self-control not to finish right then.  Maxie was telling them to “move already,” so they leaned forward and kissed Maxie on the mouth.  That was technically moving.  Archie kept their lips on Maxie’s as they regained enough control to begin to pump their hips in earnest, swallowing Maxie’s moans as they reached down and rubbed Maxie’s smaller phallus, where the two of them were joined.  And then Maxie was coming again, and Archie couldn’t hold out any longer, didn’t need to, and their hips snapped forward once more as they gasped out their release into Maxie’s shoulder.

                Archie managed to pull out and get the condom off, but they were beyond words for several minutes.

                “Sleep before we do that again?” asked Maxie, momentarily sated.

                “Yeah,” agreed Archie, still panting.

                A week later, Archie and Maxie were en route to Chiffewar, and the ship had just passed the last Gethenian checkpoint; they were free.  And if anyone in the smuggling ring who helped them escape had noticed that Maxie and Archie stood closer to each other and were more at ease in one another’s presence than before, or had noticed the broken doorknob in the safehouse, or a new crack in that fourth-hand bedframe, or certain items missing from the first-aid kit, they weren’t going to mention it.  Even smugglers have shifgrethor to maintain.

**Author's Note:**

> Alien biology sex scenes are hard to write, and I'm not entirely sure just how Gethenian genitals work. I deeply apologize. Also, I'm using singular "they" for both characters in this fic, so tell me if I used "he" by accident anywhere.


End file.
